How to Survive on Hostile 'No Man's Sky' Planets

Survival is expensive, provided you don't approach it the right way.

Whether you’re one of the lucky few who was spawned on an extremely hostile planet or navigating a dangerous environment to gather resources, keeping yourself from harm is an absolute must to stay alive in No Man’s Sky.

During your travels you’ll consistently find yourself on planets covered in severe radiation, toxic rain, snow or other harsh conditions. While traversing the surface of these planets, your exosuit will be under perennial attack by the environment around you, especially if the planet in question produces storms on its surface.

The more you explore, the more dangerous these planets become – meaning you’ll be putting more and more resources into your exosuit to stay alive. Instead of wasting increasingly as you explore, remember to take advantage of the following mechanics the game has to offer:

Upgrade Your Exosuit Inventory

Your exosuit is an upgradable resource, just like your multi-tool and spaceship. At first, you’ll start out with a very limited number of slots to customize, meaning you’ll have to search Drop Pods scattered across planet surfaces to access more.

You can find Drop Pods by access scanners on a planet’s surface, then use a bypass chip to activate it. Each Drop Pod will give you access to an additional exosuit inventory slot, with the first one being free. Any subsequent slot you add to your suit will then cost an additional 10,000 units.

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Install Technology on Your Exosuit

Every slot in your inventory has the potential to become an upgrade, meaning you’ll be able to install more technology the more slots you have. Each piece of technology works to boost a specific aspect of your character such as your resistance to a specific environmental hazard, your stamina capabilities, or your jetpack boost capacity.

Each of these upgrades requires a set amount of resources in order to craft and will consume one inventory slot in your exosuit. That said, the suit with be drastically increased in functionality, making it invaluable to your journey. Many of these upgrades are passive bonuses too, meaning you won’t have to continuously dump resources into them to keep them operational.

Sit in Your Ship or in a Cave

While navigating dangerous environments and harsh storms, your exosuit is your best friend — keeping you alive as long as you keep it powered up. Both your shield and your life support systems will run out of power eventually, meaning you’ll have to consume resources to keep each running. But, you can easily negate the effects on your shield by traveling underground or hiding away in your spaceship.

Whenever you find yourself on the surface of a hostile planet, make sure to keep your shield charged by traveling through cave networks or sitting in the cockpit of your ship. This allows you to fully charge your environmental shielding without having to consume resources.

Craft Consumables

The most obvious way to keep all of your equipment powered is by throwing raw resources like Carbon, Plutonium and Zinc into them. Typically, powering up your equipment this way takes a ton of said resources though, and can be severely negated by crafting consumables.

While exploring you’ll find blueprints for items like Shielding Shards and Power Units, each of which can be crafted out of easy to obtain resources such as Iron. These consumables can then be used to power up your exosuit, multi-tool and ship just like regular resources – the only difference is that they power it up faster and with less resources to boot.

Take your exosuit shield for example, which typically requires 40-50 Zinc to fully restore. Your shield can also be restored via Shielding Shards, which cost 25 Iron to make. Not only do these shards restore your shield faster than putting raw elements into it, but they can be made out of the easiest to obtain oxide element.